Coffee by Laura Ortberg

When: April 2006
Where: Menlo Park, CA
Contact: laura.ortberg@gmail.com

I never really wanted to look him in the eye. He sat outside of my favorite coffee shop the whole summer that I was home from college, and I couldn’t avoid him. I also couldn’t bring myself to acknowledge his presence. So, like most other people who cycled in and out through the door on their way to more important places, I pretended like he was a lesser object; a dog, perhaps, or a child in his stroller. Something that didn’t demand respect, someone whose gaze could be easily averted. Every morning, I made it my mission to sidestep him and to exclude him from my routine. Confronted with a common but uncomfortable situation, I withdrew into myself.

A good friend of our family’s, Shane Claiborne, helped to start this micro-population called ‘The Simple Way,’ where Christ-followers live together in the worst parts of Philadelphia and care for homeless people and partner with God to develop a loving community. My mom was talking with Shane once and remarked how many of her friends objected to giving money to homeless people, since they were sure to turn around and spend it on drugs or alcohol. Shane thought a while, and responded – I will never forget this – that as far as he could remember, Jesus teaches us to give to our neighbors in need. He doesn’t require that we follow up to see how our money was used, or that we attach conditions and qualifications to our gifts. Out of our abundance, we give.

And, as in all that we do, we are called to love and to be thoughtful and wise. If we pull spare change out of our coat pocket and toss it into a cup without ever looking at the person, ever seeing his eyes or stopping to ask his name, what are we really doing? When I ignored George, when I denied his personhood and closed my eyes to the piece of God’s image that he bears, I was effectively shutting a door that had been opened to me. When I finally paid George the attention that I would pay any other person I was standing on a sidewalk with, it didn’t take long before I made a friend. I couldn’t keep ignoring him as I walked in and out, as he looked at my fellow shoppers and me and never got any indication of recognition in return.

As I got to know him, I realized that George and the millions of people the world over in his situation don’t just lack a structure to give them shelter at night –although they do need that – but they don’t have a home. A home being more than four walls and a roof; it is a group of people who care for you and tend to you and are concerned when your life gets difficult. Passing him indifferently day in and out, George had come to believe that this crowd of people could care less whether he lived another day – and that secretly, some would be relieved if he were gone. For me, though, knowing George has been a transformative experience. As I’ve talked and sat and eaten with him, I’ve come to learn that the statistics representing homelessness in the United States, which can seem so vast and impersonal, are actually the composite of hundreds of thousands of very personal and very real stories.

Turns out, George isn’t so oblivious to the people who walk by him and look away. He was in love once, and lost his wife, and like most all of us, spends a good deal of his time living in fear. Events in life could just as easily have led to my soliciting outside a coffee shop in wealthy Silicon Valley. I haven’t earned my socioeconomic status, and I don’t deserve it. Neither does George. And if I turn my back on him, if I act as though he is an object to pass by, I am losing nothing less than the very soul of God.